SchansBlog

Thanks for coming! I plan to post a lot of interesting articles and comment on a wide range of things-- from political to religious, from private to public, from formal writing on public policy to snippets on random observations.

Thursday, May 31, 2012

Stiglitz, "serious analysis", and "income inequality"

Let’s start by laying down the baseline premise: inequality in America
has been widening for dec­ades. We’re all aware of the fact. Yes, there
are some on the right who deny this reality, but serious analysts
across the political spectrum take it for granted. I won’t run through
all the evidence here, except to say that the gap between the 1 percent
and the 99 percent is vast when looked at in terms of annual income, and
even vaster when looked at in terms of wealth—that is, in terms of
accumulated capital and other assets...Yes and no. Let's start with clarifying that a big chunk of this is "measured" inequality. Most notably, the tax reforms of the 1980s encouraged compensation for higher-ups in companies to be in the form of wages rather than stock. On top of that, as average compensation rises, average workers have been taking more of their compensation in the form of fringe benefits-- most notably, within the govt-distorted/subsidized market for health insurance. Both of these dramatically alter the calculus on an income-based measure of inequality. A "serious analyst" would mention this-- or even document its impact.

Moreover, a serious analyst would note that income inequality is a static (vs. dynamic) measure-- a snapshot of one year at a time. Finally, serious analysts know that there are many causes of growing income inequality-- most notably, from the demographics of marriage and households to the impact of our lousy K-12 education system on the poor and middle class. (See also: globalization, the decline of unions, welfare reform and measured income.) How could he fail to mention these, at least in passing? (Maybe he does this in his book. Maybe he wants to get his VF audience more excited by the omission? Stiglitz's literary agent says he was born in Kenya. That might explain a few things.)

The debate is over
its meaning. From the right, you sometimes hear the argument made that
inequality is basically a good thing: as the rich increasingly benefit,
so does everyone else. This argument is false: while the rich have been
growing richer, most Americans (and not just those at the bottom) have
been unable to maintain their standard of living, let alone to keep
pace. A typical full-time male worker receives the same income today he
did a third of a century ago...

This common argument from the Right is far from the full case, but is general true within a market economy. The counter-claim by Stiglitz is even more simplistic and false: that the poor have gotten poorer repeats the common canard based on lame, static analysis that the poor are the same people year-to-year. And using an income-based measure-- during a time period when compensation for the average worker has moved away from income-- is somewhere between inept and insincere. Is Stiglitz claiming to be a serious analyst?

From there, tongue-partially-in-cheek, Stiglitz turns to the following "selfish" reasons for the Rich to want less inequality.

The Consumption Problem-- poor people won't spend enough money, undermining the economy: This repeats the standard Keynesian over-emphasis on the (relatively obvious) role of consumption in an economy. And it confuses a symptom (low consumption) for its underlying cause (low compensation, caused in large part by the govt's K-12 education, family dysfunction, declining work effort, and a variety of laws that make it unnecessarily difficult for the politically unconnected to earn a living.)

The “Rent Seeking” Problem-- the pursuit of political power by the wealth: This is a valid concern and he does a great job describing political activity as "zero-sum". (This is a tough section for a lefty to absorb.) But he conflates offensive and defensive efforts in political markets. He amusingly critiques this form of govt activism while holding a naive hope in other forms of govt activism. He conflates wealth gained in economic markets with that gained in political markets. The former should be praised; the latter should be condemned (although its often embraced by those who say they're concerned about justice and income inequality). The issue isn't the 1% economically wealthy's use of political markets-- as much as the 1% politically connected use of political markets.

The Fairness Problem: Here, Stiglitz is right on the nose. His focus on opportunity over outcome is spot-on-- and usually ignored or downplayed by those on the Left. But where is economic opportunity squelched the most in our country? In the govt's K-12 education system that is set up as it is for rent-seeking by a powerful interest group! Only statists, racists, and self-interest greed-mongers could applaud the current system.

The Mistrust Problem: Again, Stiglitz is correct in fingering a big problem-- except that he's not focusing enough on political markets as a root cause of the distrust.

Hunger Games resources

I really enjoyed The Hunger Games trilogy.

It is relatively dark in tone, violent in action, dystopian and libertarian in outlook. It does not endorse the violence or brutality of the Capitol governance. In fact, it is indirectly critical of both, along with contemporary culture's voyeurism and contemporary politics' willingness to sacrifice the marginal for the connected. It is well-written, a pleasure to read, not especially predictable (for books of this type).

It's a good read for adults-- and for teens and even pre-teens, especially if accompanied by some discussion with an adult. (Not all teens and pre-teens will like it-- and not all of them should read it, particularly if they will be sensitive to or provoked by the violence.)

Here's an example of criticism from the other side. Their claim is that the charges are "trumped up", implying that they are false. That is false. One might say that the implication that the practice is widespread would be exaggerated. That would be difficult to prove, but I suspect that would be correct-- not necessarily because PP wouldn't be willing to render such "services", but because they would not be requested often in a Christian/post-Christian society. (Of course, there was plenty of exaggeration and "propaganda" in the PP response, but I appreciate their direct, verbal condemnation of sex-selective abortion. Whether that's backed up by action or desire for legislation is, of course, another matter. To note, PP has said that it will not still do sex-selective abortion, so...)

The extent to which this form of eugenics occurs in India and China is relatively well-known. The extent to which it occurs in the U.S. is smaller but significantly presumably growing. Perversely, technological advances have been responsible for this allowing this moral decline to bear "fruit". (The House will soon vote on legislation related to this practice. The
effort is symbolic-- both in the sense that it will not even be debated
by the Democratic Senate and it would be difficult to enforce in
practice.)

You can say that you care about women. You can even be anti-science and hold the position that current adult women are better off with abortion services. But it becomes even more difficult to defend abortion when it is so clearly a war on future women.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Louisville heat-related deaths to grow ten-fold in future decades

As many as 19,000 Louisville residents will die of heat-related
causes by the end of the century — topping 40 large American cities,
according to a new environmental report.

It's good to see Louisville #1 in something, I guess.

The
report by the Natural Resources Defense Council environmental group
estimates that 39 Louisville residents die per year from problems caused
by the heat. That number, it says, will increase to 257 per year by
roughly 2050 and 376 per year by the end of the century.

Really...wow! That's quite an increase. Ten-fold growth by the end of the century!

Based
on computer modeling, the study assumes government leaders do nothing
to stop rising temperatures that many scientists blame on greenhouse gas
emissions...

--> What else are they assuming? Obama-like economic policies that stagnate or sack the economy (vs. growing incomes and improved technology to deal with heat). No changes in response to heat by Louisville's population. The Earth will still be around, despite massive global warming.

Monday, May 21, 2012

science, reductionism, and order

Since the time of Newton, science has advanced by a strategy rightly
called “reductionism.” This method, which explains things by analyzing
them into smaller and simpler parts, has yielded a rich harvest of
discoveries about the natural world. As a means of analysis, then,
reductionism has certainly proven its value. But many wonder whether
science is reductive in a more radical and disturbing way—by flattening,
collapsing, and trivializing the world....

This
tendency to downgrade and diminish reflects a metaphysical prejudice
that equates explanatory reduction with a grim slide down the ladder of
being. Powerful explanatory schemes reveal things to be simpler than
they appear. What simpler means in science is much discussed
among philosophers—it is not at all a simple question. But to many
materialists it seems to mean lower, cruder, and more trivial. By this
way of thinking, the further we push toward a more basic understanding
of things, the more we are immersed in meaningless, brutish bits of
matter....

At
first glance, the history of the cosmos seems to bear this out. Early
on, the universe was filled with nearly featureless gas and dust, which
eventually condensed to form galaxies, stars, and planets. In stars and
supernovas, the simplest elements, hydrogen and helium, fused to make
heavier ones, gradually building up the whole periodic table. In some
primordial soup, or slime, or ooze on the early earth, atoms
agglomerated into larger and more intricate molecules until
self-replicating ones appeared and life began. From one-celled
organisms, ever more complicated living things evolved, until sensation
and thought appeared. In cosmic evolution the arrow apparently moves
from chaos to order, formlessness to form, triviality to complexity, and
matter to mind.

And that is why, according to philosopher Daniel
Dennett, religion has it exactly upside down. Believers think that God
reached down to bring order and create, whereas in reality the world was
built—or rather built itself—from the ground up. In Dennett’s metaphor,
the world was constructed not by “skyhooks” reaching down from the
heavens but by “cranes” supported by, and reaching up from, the solid
ground.

The history to which the atheist points—of matter
self-organizing and physical structures growing in complexity—is correct
as far as it goes, but it is only part of the story. The lessons the
atheist draws are naive. Yes, the world we experience is the result of
processes that move upward. But Dennett and others overlook the hidden
forces and principles that govern those processes. In short, they are
not true reductionists because they don’t go all the way down to the
most basic explanations of reality.

As we turn to the
fundamental principles of physics, we discover that order does not
really emerge from chaos, as we might naively assume; it always emerges
from greater and more impressive order already present at a deeper
level. It turns out that things are not more coarse or crude or unformed
as one goes down into the foundations of the physical world but more
subtle, sophisticated, and intricate the deeper one goes.

Barr moves to a "simple but instructive example of how order can appear to
emerge spontaneously from mere chaos through the operation of natural
forces": a large number of identical marbles rolling around
randomly in a shoe box, but then the box is tilted vs. a typical teenager’s bedroom that is tilted by a huge jack

Ehrenreich on political and economic markets that harm the poor

Individually, the poor are not all that tempting to thieves. Mug a
banker and you might score a wallet containing a month’s rent. Mug a
janitor and you’ll be lucky to get bus fare to flee the crime scene. But
the poor in aggregate provide a juicy target for anyone depraved enough
to make a business of stealing from them.

Great point. Markets will arise to engage in trade with groups of people. In relatively rare cases, consumers will be relatively vulnerable to significant fraud or coercion within markets. In debatable cases, consumers may be "irrational" and could potentially be protected from their own bad decisions.

The
trick, however, is to rob them in ways that are systematic, impersonal
and almost impossible to trace to individual perpetrators.

Again, this could happen in markets. It certainly happens in govt policy all the time-- as govt works to help special interest groups and imposes subtle costs on the general public, often disproportionately on the poor.

Ehrenreich criticizes lenders in the high-risk / high rate-of-return niche of credit markets. The market seems quite competitive, but perhaps the consumers are morons. I'd like to extend a lot more dignity to poor people than Ehrenreich, but maybe she's right.

She critiques employers who "enrich themselves...by taking money
from their employees...requiring employees to work hours for which they’re not
paid, failing to pay minimum wage and refusing to honor overtime pay
differentials." This is an interesting critique, since it hits all workers-- and again, she's implicitly assuming few options for the working poor and/or their irrationality. Maybe the poor are hit harder by this, but why do they stand for it?

Ehrenreich points to local govts and the imposition of fines and fees on defendants-- for drivers license problems, polluting with cigarette butts, modest amounts of pot, putting your feet on a subway seat, etc.

She wraps up with this: "Before we can 'do something' for the poor, there are some things we need to stop doing to them." I've written a book and a half on this-- as well as numerous articles and blog posts. I couldn't agree with her more. Unfortunately, she advocates many policies that hammer the poor.

nepotism with felonies isn't as bad as a lame joke for which one apologizes

LEO
follows in the footsteps of the C-J (LOL!) with twisted preferences on
Rand Paul's bad attempt at a joke (for which he has apologized) vs.
Barbara Shanklin firing her grandson. (LEO pointed out that this was his
3rd arrest since being hired and 31st in a decade.)

LEO rated
the former as -8 (on a scale of -10 to 10), but the latter as only a -3.

The C-J'ers gave Grover Norquist's mere appearance in a movie a "down arrow", along with Paul's joke. And they gave Shanklin an up arrow.

If the C-J editorialists keep any of their crack pipes at work, maybe the police will find one and use asset forfeiture laws to take the paper away from its owners!

how should the Church handle so-called "same-sex marriage" vs. divorce?

A few thoughts: -God defined it that way, as she notes, "in the beginning".-God continues to define it that way, as an ideal. -But in a fallen world, God allowed all sorts of things with respect to marriage-- most notably, "levirate marriage", where polygamy was often commanded. -So-called "same-sex marriage" is more of a violation of Webster's Dictionary.

Two big "policy" questions: -What should missionaries do when people come to Christ in a polygamous culture? -Given Kassian's argument, why haven't believers and the Church said more about the institution and practice of divorce in the last few decades, which causes far, far more damage-- both in its frequency and its damage to children?

I Corinthians 5:9-13 indicates that sin in the church is worse than sin in the world. Matthew 18:6 indicates that two adults messing with children is worse than two adults messing with each other. Justice indicates that people forcefully messing with others is worse than people engaging in mutually agreeable but sinful activities.

I
heard a Sunday School lesson on Luke 15 (a few weeks ago at WRBC) that
got me thinking about how we deal with sin differently when it relates
to "the other". Part of the genius of Lk 15's trio is getting us to
think about "sinners" as lost, valuable and personal. Generalizing about the (theologically conservative) Church's response to divorce, abortion, and homosexuality: Seeking to balance grace and truth, perhaps we handle D better than A better than H, since we're more likely to know someone who has D more than A more than H.

Which is less consistent with the heart of Jesus: people making less-than-ideal commitments-- or breaking an ideal commitment, backed by an oath to God and promises to others which does harm to the institution of the commitment and often does great harm to children?

Friday, May 18, 2012

please pray for Jason Oller

Please pray for Jason Oller in Louisville, KY...

Pray that God would do what it takes to reach him.

Pray that he would be convicted by God, saved by Jesus, and empowered by Holy Spirit.

A little more than halfway through this sermon (June 2-3, 2012), Kyle talks about the rocks we bring to marriage and ask our spouse to carry. Pray for those who do not recognize they have any rocks and are unable to carry a modest-sized rock more than a few months. Pray for those with whom Jason forms
relationships-- that they will have an extra measure of discernment,
wisdom and courage.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Noah's drunken nakedness and the aftermath

Intro to an oft-overlooked story: brief, ugly, and not understood
in its context

--> given the post-Flood
law/covenant to Noah, see: Kass (197) on “the founding of civil society, based
on rudimentary but explicit notions of law and justice, rooted in the idea that
all human beings are created equally in God’s image. Humankind now faces a new
prospect, founded on the hope for an enduring human future protected against
natural cataclysm, thanks to God’s covenant—and the hope for a peaceful social
order protected against the violence of other men, thanks to the Noahide code.”

-so, the story is both
domestic and political/social: Will the new order succeed? Is this law and
covenant sufficient?

-Kass (199): “because [the
father] is capable of inspiring awe as well as security, shame as well as
orderliness, distance as well as nearness, emulation as well as confidence,
fear as well as hope, [he] is able to do the fatherly work of preparing boys
for moral manhood, including, eventually, their own fatherhood.”

-can certainly be
abused; difficult to balance encouragement and discipline

--> two clues that
something might be unusual here

-8:16’s command vs. 8:18’s different order (followed 6:18’s command on how to enter—the
old world’s model!)

-Kass (202): “Noah, a
new man rescued from the Heroic Age, nevertheless apparently still holds to a
heroic model of family structure: it is only the men who count.” (!)

-see also: little
mention of women (Noah’s wife’s name?) until their vital role with the
patriarchs

-here, not listed in order;
not Biblically unusual to have two siblings reversed, but here…

-Kass (209): “We readers
are touched by this display of loyalty and filial piety…the perfect way they
found delicately to correct the problem without participating in it…but they
cannot erase the memory of their deed or of what made it necessary for them to
perform it.” (and probably made things weird with Dad, from here forward)

-as God covers our
shame/nakedness

-again underlines
advantage of ears vs. eyes: once you see, it’s burned in your memory; if you
hear, you may dismiss it as hearsay

-an interesting
reference, again, to (appropriate) “knowledge”

--> big picture: both embrace
authority and law/covenant

--> sobering: Cain/Abel’s
first sibling story—rivalry; here, first parental story—Dad stumbles, struggles
to pass on law/covenant and some conflict

-Kass (198):
“fundamental and troublesome aspects of the natural relationship between father
and sons…not how things ought to be but rather how they are, absent some
additional, corrective teaching [or other intervention]”

9:24-29’s Noah’s response

-28-29’s Noah’s
death/age

--> Kass (210) quips: “Noah
does not take his shame lying down.”—before observing “for the first time in
the biblical narrative, we hear Noah speak…Noah’s anger is surely expected, as
rage is the usual response to being shamed.”

-Rabbi Jonathan Sacks
(45-47) points back to the flood narrative and is pretty rough on Noah

-what does Noah say to
God when it’s time to build the ark and save his family? silent obedience—but
maybe obedience is not enough…

-what did Noah say to
those around him? unknown, except Heb 11:7’s “by his faith he condemned the
world” (how much of that was spoken?)

-the biggie: no
intervention with God on behalf of those to be destroyed

--> “God seeks from us
something other and greater than obedience, namely responsibility...the hero of
faith was not Noah but Abraham”—fought a war for his nephew and prayed for the
people of the plain, even challenging God: “What might an Abraham have said when
confronted with the possibility of a flood?...Abraham might have saved the
world. Noah saved only himself and his family. Abraham might have failed, but
Noah—at least on the evidence of the text—did not even try…Noah’s end—drunk,
disheveled, an embarrassment to his children—eloquently tells us that if you
save yourself while doing nothing to save the world, you do not even save
yourself…”

[1] Later, the phrase “uncover the nakedness
of” became a euphemism for “have sexual relations with”, but there is no sense
of that context here. Kass (212-213) wonders whether its repeated use in Lev
18—with child sacrifice in the middle of a long list of sexual prohibitions—is
a reference to Noah/Ham here. It’s also interesting that the Canaanites would
struggle with sexual perversions.

[2] Kass also wrestles with the philosopher
as antinomian. Here, Ham’s deed would be a function of curiosity, willing to
look at/into anything. Ultimately, given that he also “tells”, Kass seems this
as more tyrannical.

[3] 10:21’s
Japheth as prob. older brother of Shem (but NIV text note). Judah/Joseph
parallel would argue for Shem as oldest, but favoring oldest would be atypical
in God’s economy.

[4] Sacks also points to the
pace of the narrative: very quick until the waters recede; would expect Noah to
emerge, but little action for 14 verses (ch. 8’s birds sent out); and then, he
does not come out until commanded by God (good news earlier; other side of the
coin here). Sacks concludes “It takes courage to rebuild a shattered world…When
it comes to rebuilding the ruins of catastrophe, you do not wait for
permission. You take the risk and walk ahead. Faith is more than obedience. It
is the courage to create.”

About Me

First and foremost, I am saved by God's grace as manifested most clearly through the atoning death of Jesus Christ-- and thus, adopted into His family. As a result, I increasingly seek to extend His grace to others in my daily life. On the home front, I am a husband and father to four young men (two by adoption and two the more conventional way). Professionally, I am an economist who loves to teach and is active in public policy circles. Vocationally, I am an active writer and the author of three books (one on the book of Joshua; two on public policy-- one secular, one Christian). Finally, I am the co-author of a 21-month discipleship curriculum, Thoroughly Equipped (and a lighter 36-week version), for developing competent lay-leaders in the Church. Related to that work, Kurt and I have two books, Enough Horses in the Barn and Roll Up Your Sleeves.